Brazil’s Launch Site is in a Great Location, But Will US Rocket Companies Want to Use It?
Hello reader!
It follows an article published day (03/21), in the
website of THE VERGE, noting that Alcantara Rocket Base is really in a great
location, but will American rocket companies want to use it?
Duda Falcão
POLICY
Brazil’s Launch Site is in a Great Location,
But Will US Rocket Companies Want to Use It?
The pros and cons of the Alcântara Launch Center
By Loren
Grush
Mar 21, 2019, 1:30pm EDT
Photo: Space Imaging / Getty Images
Photo: Space Imaging / Getty Images
On Tuesday, the Trump administration signed a preliminary agreement with Brazil that
could one day lead to US rockets launching from the South American country’s
coastal spaceport. President Trump praised the idea of using the site, arguing
that “because of the location, tremendous amounts of money would be saved.” But
while the launch site offers up a few key benefits to US launch providers, it’s
possible that these advantages may not be enough to draw all major rocket
companies to the area.
The biggest asset of Brazil’s spaceport is its proximity
to the equator. The site, known as the Alcântara Launch Center, is located at a
latitude of just 2.3 degrees south. For anyone launching a rocket, that’s a
juicy spot. There aren’t many options on Earth for launching that close to the
equator, and the site would make it much easier for satellite operators to send
payloads into an equatorial orbit. Additionally, rockets at the equator get an
extra boost in speed, thanks to the Earth’s rotation, which helps rockets save
on fuel.
THE BIGGEST ASSET OF BRAZIL’S
SPACEPORT IS ITS PROXIMITY
TO THE EQUATOR
However, the logistics of setting up a new launch site in
Brazil could be an issue for some. The larger US rocket companies, such as
SpaceX, the United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin, already have multiple
options for launching out of the US that are relatively close to the equator. A
new site would need a lot of upfront investment in order to create the ground
infrastructure in Brazil to support each company’s unique rocket design. It’s a
lot of money and work for a small amount of benefit in flights. Plus shipping
overseas to Brazil can add an extra layer of time and money that wouldn’t be an
issue when launching from the US.
There are some launch providers on the smaller end of the
rocket scale that see big opportunities in Brazil. Companies like startup
Vector, which are focused solely on launching small satellites, have openly
advocated for the chance to launch out of Alcântara. It would allow them to
launch missions that they simply cannot do in the United States because of
their smaller size. Since the company’s hardware isn’t as big as that of a
Falcon 9 or an Atlas V rocket, very little investment is needed to make the
launchpad infrastructure. “I think it’s really going to be the domain of the
future small rockets that go there,” Jim Cantrell, CEO and co-founder of
Vector, tells The Verge.
WHY BRAZIL?
Rockets launching again from Alcântara would reinvigorate
what was once a major national resource for Brazil. Numerous sounding rockets took flight from the
area throughout the 1990s. But in 2003, a rocket intended for orbit exploded on
the site’s launchpad during some ground tests, killing 21 people nearby and
leveling the pad’s launch tower. The accident halted Brazil’s efforts to launch
two planned satellites, and the country’s space efforts have had difficulty
recovering.
Photo: AFP / Getty Images
Wreckage at the Alcântara Launch Center,
following the
2003 explosion.
|
Since then, Brazil has been looking for international
partnerships to bring other countries’ vehicles to Alcântara. The country even
courted the Bush administration back in 2000 to bring commercial launches to
the site, but those efforts were met with opposition from Brazilian lawmakers.
Now, Brazil is trying again. In 2018, the government invited two major US players
in aerospace, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to visit Alcântara, according
to a report in Reuters. The goal is to offer up a cheaper
location than the nearby Guiana Space Centre in South America’s French Guiana
where all of Europe’s rockets take flight.
Alcântara boasts a few impressive geographic benefits
that are needed for a spaceport. It’s on the coast of Brazil, with the Atlantic
Ocean to the east. That’s key for a launch site, as many rockets launch
eastward to match the direction of Earth’s orbit. Launching over a large body
of water is important for safety, as it reduces the risk of a falling rocket
part hitting someone on the ground or damaging someone’s property. It’s the
reason why US launches occur in coastal areas, such as Cape Canaveral, Florida,
or the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
BRAZIL HAS A SLIGHT ADVANTAGE
OVER CAPE CANAVERAL
Brazil has a slight advantage over Cape Canaveral, which
is located at around 28.5 degrees north. Being near the equator is great for
sending satellites into a type of orbit known as a geostationary orbit. This is
a path 22,000 miles above the Earth’s equator where satellites are traveling at
the same speed as the Earth’s rotation. The result is that satellites basically
hover over the same patch of Earth at all times. It’s a perfect spot to deposit
a communications satellite or a surveillance probe that needs to look at the
same region of the planet at all times.
Photo: NASA / Getty Images
A SpaceX Falcon 9 takes off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
|
Getting to geostationary orbit from Florida takes a
little extra work, though. Rockets must deposit a satellite on a path that’s
slightly askew from the equator (at a 28.5-degree tilt), and the satellites
then need to change their direction in orbit by burning an onboard engine. That
requires fuel, which takes up space on a satellite and influences the vehicle’s
design. At a spot like Alcântara or the Guiana Space Center, such a plane
change would be minuscule, requiring less fuel.
Additionally, the Earth is actually moving
faster at the equator than other points on the planet, which is good
news for rockets. The Earth’s equator is its widest section, so it has a long
way to travel each time the planet makes a full 24-hour rotation. One spot on
the equator has to go a much greater distance than a spot near the poles, for
instance. So a rocket launching on the equator gets an extra speed boost,
making it easier for the vehicle to reach the extra high velocities needed to
achieve orbit. The rocket doesn’t need as much fuel, making launches more
efficient and potentially allowing companies to pack in more cargo on a flight.
“You can use a less powerful rocket to launch the same
satellite, or you can launch a bigger satellite using the same launch vehicle,”
Lakshmi Kantha, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of
Colorado Boulder, tells The Verge.
WHO ACTUALLY WANTS TO LAUNCH FROM BRAZIL?
Are all of these benefits enough to lure major US
companies to Brazil? It’s not an enormous inconvenience to ship rockets over
water. In fact, Arianespace ships its rockets by boat from Europe and Russia to
French Guiana. The ULA also ships parts of its Delta IV Heavy by boat, and NASA
used to ship the Space Shuttle’s external tank from New Orleans to Florida.
“Large ships are used to accommodate oversized hardware,” Dennis Jenkins, an
aerospace engineer at the California Science Center who used to work on the
Space Shuttle, tells The Verge. “Most large rockets throughout
history have been shipped at least partially by sea.”
THE PERFORMANCE BENEFIT OF
MOVING EVEN FARTHER SOUTH
ISN’T GOING TO BE AS
CONSEQUENTIAL FOR US
COMPANIES
However, moving by boat is time-consuming and somewhat
costly, especially when traveling to Brazil via the Panama Canal. “That, of
course, is one of the problems with ships — they’re very slow,” says Jenkins.
Having a launch site closer to where a rocket is built does make things more
efficient. Recently, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk noted that the company’s
next-generation rocket, the Starship, would be built in Texas and Florida, next
door to two of SpaceX’s launch sites. Plus, locations like Texas and Florida
are still quite far south, so the performance benefit of moving even farther
south isn’t going to be as consequential for US companies, as it would be for
Russia or European nations.
Then there’s the cost of outfitting Alcântara to meet a
launch provider’s needs. For larger rockets, companies will have to add
concrete pads, towers, and fuel storage tanks to the surrounding area to
support flights of their vehicles. Creating all of that in the Brazilian
jungle, where there is minimal infrastructure in place already, will require a
lot of work and investment. Plus, all of this would be in service to booking
more missions to geostationary orbit, which is a type of flight that has seen a
recent downturn in the market.
Photo: Vector
A Vector rocket, which stands about 40 feet tall.
|
SpaceX already told Reuters that it was
not interested in building at Alcântara and declined to comment to The
Verge. Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which oversee the United Launch
Alliance, confirmed they had looked at the site but haven’t made any major
plans to invest there yet. “While we have made no concrete plans at this time,
the potential for a new launch site is an encouraging development given the
global interest in fast and efficient launch opportunities,” a representative
for Lockheed Martin said in a statement to The Verge. Boeing
declined to comment.
Ultimately, Alcântara may be a better investment for
rocket companies that don’t look like SpaceX or ULA, ones that are chasing
another market entirely. Companies like Vector are only capable of launching
smaller satellites to low Earth orbit, and these types of probes are incapable
of changing their directions significantly in space. So if a small satellite
operator wants to go into a lower orbit over the equator, they basically have
to launch at the equator. “Virtually nobody is launching any
rockets to low Earth orbit equatorial orbits,” says Cantrell. “Virtually
nobody.” Vector hopes to be one of the first companies to offer that option,
claiming that around 10 customers have asked for it.
“ALL WE REALLY NEED
THERE IS A CONCRETE PAD.”
An extra boost in speed for a small launcher like Vector
means much more than for SpaceX or the ULA. It could be the difference between
launching 200 pounds and 300 pounds, opening up the company to different types
of missions. Plus, the infrastructure and transportation costs for Vector’s
smaller rockets are less of an inconvenience. “All we really need there is a
concrete pad like we built already in Alaska, and we need permission to
launch,” Cantrell says, adding that the company’s rocket can fit inside of an
airplane.
Alcântara is nowhere close to being open for the US
rocket business yet. The US signed what is known as a technology safeguards
agreement with the company, which is the same kind of agreement Bush signed
back in 2000. The deal needs to be approved by the Brazilian Congress, and if
that happens, there are still a lot of regulatory hurdles to go through. But if
it is allowed someday, the site seems much more suited for smaller rockets than
bigger ones.
Source: Website THE VERGE - https://www.theverge.com
Comentário: Um interessante artigo deste site THE VERGE,
porém leitor de minha parte não acreditamos que a SpaceX ou qualquer outra
grande empresa do mercado (americana ou não) venha se interessar pela Base de Alcântara, pelo menos não num
primeiro momento, isto deve ser sim objeto de desejo de
pequenas startups espaciais brasileiras (caso o governo seja eficiente e gere
demandas) e estrangeiras, como bem colocou recentemente o Eng. Lucas Fonseca da
startup brasileira 'Airvantis' em sua entrevista para o “Canal Money
Report” do youtube (veja aqui). Aproveitamos para agradecer publicamente ao nosso leitor Markus Wirz pelo envio desse interessante artigo.
este ano de 2019 teremos algum lançamento no CLA ?
ResponderExcluire qual será o foguete ?
ele será um Orbital ou Suborbital ?
o Sara-2 ainda será lançado ou deixou de existir ?
Olá Unknown!
ExcluirVamos lá:
Este ano de 2019 teremos algum lançamento no CLA ?
R: Está sim previsto um voo do CLA, mas ainda não confirmado.
E qual será o foguete ?
R: Se tudo ocorrer como se espera será o VS-50
Ele será um Orbital ou Suborbital ?
R: Será Suborbital, voo de qualificação do motor-foguete S-50, motor este que será usado no primeiro e segundo estágios do futuro VLM-1.
O Sara-2 ainda será lançado ou deixou de existir ?
R: O Projeto SARA como um todo, segundo o que foi divulgado no "Relatório de Atividades de 2018 do Instituto de Aeronáutica e Espaço (IAE)" foi definitivamente descontinuado.
Bom é isso
Abs
Duda Falcão
(Blog Brazilian Space)
se o projeto SARA fosse levado a sério, seria o nosso primeiro Satélite Artificial , mesmo levando apenas dez dias em órbita.
ResponderExcluirQual foguete seria usado para lançar o SARA-3 Orbital ?
ResponderExcluirOlá Anônimo!
ExcluirO projeto inicial previa quatro etapas com o uso do foguete VS-40 para os dois voos suborbitais (SARA Suborbital 1 e 2) e do antigo VLS-1 para os dois voos orbitais (SARA orbital 3 e 4).
Abs
Duda Falcão
(Blog Brazilian Space)
será que tem alguma relaçao do cançelamento do projeto SARA devido ao também cançelamento do VLS-1 , já que seria usado no SARA-3 e no SARA-4 ?
ExcluirOlá Anônimo!
ExcluirNão creio, são projetos independentes e mesmo com o cancelamento do VLS-1, existiam outras alternativas para os testes dessas duas outras capsulas. Além do que havia ainda a necessidade da repetição do voo da SARA Suborbital-1, bem como a realização do voo da SARA Suborbital-2, o que daria tempo para achar uma solução para os testes das SARA-3 e 4, mesmo que não fosse uma solução nacional. Fora isso o FAB anunciou que o cancelamento foi por falta de recursos.
Abs
Duda Falcão
(Blog Brazilian Space)